Well, unfortunately, some things went BOOM this week! So, we're not going to be freeing those docks just yet....

What we wanted to do for this week was present you with this!

Where you can capture a ship from The Rose and then explore Falconreach Bay! You would be able to visit a few of the islands in Bay and eventually make your way to other towns (though Verteroche doesn't look so welcoming...) and Deep Water Fish off of your boat!

As we realized today though, as I heard the sounds of mixed laughter and crying coming from Rolith's Coding Lair and Emporium... this ship exploration engine was one of the very first things that Rolith ever helped to build, along with Warlic and Ghost.

And that this can happen.

So, now that Rolith finally has his hands on the engine, he's going to fix it and break it and twist it and break it some more and squash some bugs and then the other bugs that popped up and then you will be able to go saaaaaaailing!

For This Week!For this week, though, the Mogloween Storybook is available through your quest log! You'll be able to replay, or catch up on, the previous Mogloween stories. See if you can race with Rolith and get all the masks before he can fix the badges!

That Storage Closet in Oaklore... you know the one... rusty, complicated lock... you need to be level 999 to enter... think you can break in? Pick that lock? I dunno... it looks like hours of work to just get into an empty closet. If you do decide to try for it, make sure to write down the combination... though, I'm sure that nothing but more dust gathered in that closet between Book 1 and Book 3... right?

A new week is here and it's time to roll up our sleeves and get started with the bug smashing! We're going to start right at the beginning and focus on Oaklore this week, getting bugs and errors fixed up. Feel free to join on and help with the smashing!

Dragon*Con Pet!May I also present a preview of the 2011 Dragon*Con pet! Tomix is working hard on wrangling this fiery little DragonPony as we speak and it will go to all of those fans who visited us at Dragon*Con. Thank you for coming out and supporting us!

So, reading the response to Obsidian Tog made me realize something: I’m not being evil enough.Also there have been several bugs with the combat engine that have been left alone for far too long and it was about time I stopped avoiding the maze of code that is our TWO separate battle engines (one for new quests and the legacy one from pre-9.0 era that runs the majority of fights in DragonFable even still) and fix the problems.

What’s been fixed in 9.8? I’ll do a quick list for those of you wanting a cliffnotes:

Having negative stats will no longer deal zero damage – true for both players and monsters

Weapons with on-hit specials will now only affect the hit they trigger on – not continually hit every strike after the first one in a special

These bugs were both in the player’s favor and as such lower priority, but they lead to a very unbalanced game that resulted in some armors being far more powerful than ever intended (looking at you ChickenCow Lord). These bug fixes will let us make more classes with fun animations and more weapons with on-hit specials.

These bugs were tracked down thanks to the help of the community, a bonus big props to our bugs lead Verlyrus!

The Battle Engine is held together with string and sheer force of will, so playing inside it is like poking a cobra with the Cobra Annoying Stick (Patent Pending Ebil Corp). Things will go badly. Very badly. It went about as well as you’d expect.

Long story short, I took a mop and a flamethrower into the battle engine and walked out victorious, resulting in a much more organized base of code and two big bugs as trophies of the rampage. With that we should see more bug fixes like these two in the future with considerably fewer headaches. (for those of you artistically inclined – Rolith wielding a mop and a flamethrower would make an epic piece of fanart).

It's definitely Fall today, even in Florida, and you can see pumpkins decorating homes and stores all throughout the area, so what better time to release a Gourd Hunt?

Rare gourd Rewards will be dropping from MANY quests throughout the game from this Friday to next, so you'll want to replay as many quests as possible in order to get your rare, never-seen-again gourd items!

Here's what you'll be hunting for:

Shiny Gourd (level 10) and Mighty Shiny Gourd (level 40)

Flaming Gourd (30) and Purple Flaming Gourd (50)

Platinum Pumpkin (20) and Glowing Platinum Pumpkin (60)

There are three new items which the pumpkins will grow into, a low and high level of each, all made by True Mortal!

If you don't feel like farming (because you don't really HUNT gourds, do you?) for the gourds, then we have a solution for you! You can talk to Cysero outside his Superstore of Savings in Falconreach and just BUY yourself some gourds!

Of course, Nature takes her time, so the Dragon Coin gourds will also take a week to grow into the items. But for those of you with the Coins and a lack of time, this is a great way to ensure that you get a chance to grab these awesome items!

From time to time, players in the DF boards on our forum ask us to take a week off and fix a bunch of bugs. Well, we can't just take a week off, we'd miss releasing new stuff for you too much, but this we DID sit Rolith down in front of his computer and have Verlyrus send him a list of easily duplicatable (and some NOT so easily duplicatable) class bugs to fix. And fix them he did! Aelthai also did a ton of fixing, while Verylrus coordinated testing and keeps track of all the bugs we let slip into the game.

The list might not look long, but a fair bit of coding and a TON of testing (thanks to everyone who ran through the new classes last night with Rolith, Verlyrus, and Aelthai) went into these bug fixes! Go Team Codemonkey!

Here's a list of what's been corrected:

The Zhoom guest no longer does zero damage.

Mage and DragonMage's Thorny Shield no longer causes a freeze when attacked by a pet in PvP.

Mage and DragonMage's Thorny Shield no longer decays in power over multiple battles.

And as if all THAT weren't enough, Artix Entertainment has launched it's very first full-length novel, The Dragon's Secret, written by Lyra Trice Solis, a staff writer for AdventureQuest! It's available RIGHT NOW in HeroMart, our online merchandise store!

The novel will cost $14.95 plus shipping, and come with a WIDE variety of reward items in AdventureQuest, DragonFable, MechQuest, and AdventureQuest Worlds!

For a summary of what The Dragon's Secret is about, check out this DragonFable Design Notes post! It's the perfect size to read in bed or in the car. But if you're going to read in class, don't blame us if you get piled with extra homework as a punishment! (But this novel is TOTALLY worth an extra paper assignment or two!)

Have a great weekend, and if we're lucky, we'll see you at ShadoCon! Artix Entertainment staff will be at our booth there ALL weekend long! We hope you stop by to say hi, but if you don't live in the Tampa Bay area, we're always happy to talk with you on Twitter!

PS: Mogloween will be leaving the game on Tuesday, so this weekend is your last chance to get all those awesome Resident Sneevil rares! They'll NEVER be offered in-game again!